Digital Transformation, Big Data, Analytics, IoT, Mobility, Cloud are the hottest terms around, with a lot of confusion even in matured organizations. This is an effort to simplify the area.

Sunday, 4 June 2017

Cybersecurity in Digital age

You must have
heard about the global cyberattack of WannaCry ransomware in over 200
countries. It encrypted all the files on the machine and asked for payment. Ransomware,
which demands payment after launching a cyber-attack, has become a rising trend
among hackers looking for a quick payout.

Every day it
seems another news breaks about cyber-criminals hacking in and stealing data,
& information. Private companies, government agencies, hospitals…no one is
immune. Cybersecurity is no longer buried in the tech section of organizations,
newspapers and websites - its front-page news.

With the
penetration of the digital movement, cyber-attacks have also doubled year over
year, making businesses and government sites more vulnerable.

In simple terms
cybersecurity is use of digital technologies to protect company networks,
computers and programs from unauthorized access and subsequent damage.

In recent times,
every organization has launched a “go-digital” initiative. This has led to
explosion of connected environments.

The growing
mobility trend has sparked a rapid growth of endpoints that must be secured,
and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs mean that employees could be
accessing sensitive data on unsecured devices.

The prevalence
of cloud based services and third party data storing has opened up new areas of
risk.

As businesses adopt
the new technologies like Big Data, Analytics, IoT & Mobility, the focus
must be on how to safeguard the data spread across devices and cloud.

Cybersecurity
must be a key factor during your journey to digitally transforming your business,
just as you would ensure that your offices, brick-and-mortar store has locks
and security systems of the highest quality, your digital storefront must have
the same levels of security. If consumers do not trust these digital storefront
with their data, or if that trust is broken because of a data breach, the cost
to rebuild that trust is incredibly high.

The best way to
protect yourself is to be suspicious of unsolicited emails and always type out
web addresses yourself rather than clicking on links.

There are
different types of attacks we have seen so far:

·Hackers
target the software vulnerabilities that are yet to be discovered and patched

·Attack
on mobile devices: malwares designed specifically for smartphones to steal data

·Data
leakage: hackers steal the data by interrupting the traffic between
organization and cloud environments

·Programming:
hackers use malicious code on any server that gets replicated and allow them to
delete, steal data

·Investment
in securing IoT devices – today with everything is connected it is extremely
important to secure all access points.

Today with
machine learning organizations are in a very good position to know what users
are doing that can affect the network and increase risk. Artificial Intelligence is used to constantly learn new malware behaviors and recognize
how viruses may mutate to try and get around security systems.

Traditional IT
security practices like network monitoring and segmentation will become even
more critical as businesses and governments deploy IoT devices.

Recent events
have highlighted the growing need for enhanced cybersecurity.